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Sauce Tartare

A creamy condiment made from egg yolks, oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and cucumber pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and cucumber are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Place the yolks of two eggs in a deep plate.

  2. Gradually add salad oil while beating continuously until thick like soft butter.

  3. Thin the mixture with lemon juice and vinegar, then add more oil to thicken and thin again as needed.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and stir in the chopped cucumber pickles.

Serve

  1. Serve with croquettes or baked fish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into a thick, stable sauce that holds its body.
Salad oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its rich, thick texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and thins it to a spoonable consistency.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually while beating. Oil must be added slowly so the yolk lecithin can emulsify it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving a greasy, runny sauce that will not thicken.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, cucumber):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, cucumber. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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